Gregory J. Gordon

CEO & Founder
Instructor

Instrument: Vocals, Keyboards, Harmonica

Gregory J. Gordon is the founder and CEO of Pyramind Inc. He graduated with honors from SF State University in 1986 with an inter-disciplinary Bachelor of Arts degree of his own creation in Music, Business, and Broadcasting. His passion for music and sound led him to become a Mix/re-mix engineer, a producer, an educator and an award winning sound designer and entrepreneur. Greg started Pyramind in 1988 and was one of the first to build and operate a fully integrated MIDI and digital audio production studio in the SF Bay Area. In 1996 Greg was asked to develop the digital audio program at SFSU’s multimedia studies program. He went on to build relations with Apple Computers, Digidesign Inc., Ableton and other industry leaders to create his unique vision of a digital audio based production and training center. His idea to integrate top manufacture sponsored certifications into a comprehensive vocational training solution for audio professionals led to Pyramind’s highly-touted 920 hour 12-month Digital Sound Producer-Complete (DSP-C).

Greg is an eighteen-year voting member of NARAS and is now in his fourth term as a governor for the SF chapter where he was elected Trustee for the June 2009 to June 2011 term. Greg is also a founding member of Test Press and the executive producer of the releases TestPress.01 (2007) and TestPress.02 (2009).

In 2007 Greg was awarded the prestigious “Established Entrepreneur Of The Year” by the Renaissance School Of Entrepreneurship and received certificates of recognition and merit from State Assemblyman Mark Leno, San Francisco City Treasurer Jose Cisneros and California State Senator Carole Migden.

In 2008 Greg worked with the producers of Lovefest, San Francisco's largest electronic music festival, to become a founding member and producer of The Get Connected Electronic Music Summit: An annual event designed to bring together leaders and enthusiasts in the electronic music, media and technology industries to explore and develop innovative opportunities across these increasingly converging sectors.

Matt Donner

Chief Academic Officer
Instructor

Instrument: Guitar, Bass

Matt Donner has been playing music his whole life. He played throughout college while earning a Bachelor's degree in quantitative Business Analysis but left the and cut his Producer and Engineering chops in NYC. He found himself working for high-profile studios like Sound on Sound (Diddy, Anita Baker) and Greene Street (Run DMC and Public Enemy) right after earning his Masters in Music and Music Technology at NYU. He went on to perform for various TV studios and John Cale (Velvet Underground) that included 3 feature film scores using Pro Tools version 1.0 and a two-day live event to open the Andy Warhol Museum. After signing his band to an indy record deal, his cross-country tour brought him to SF where the drummer exploded - how typical.

Matt quickly found himself in high demand in the studio scene as a rare experienced Pro Tools user and became an award-winning Regional Technical Director for Guitar Center, and the Pro Tools Support Lead for the Cutting Edge Audio Group where he served as studio designer, installer and trainer for the likes of Joe Satriani, Metallica, Benny Reitveld (Santana and the SF Jazz Fest) as well as hundreds of private studios including Wally World (Walter A., N'Sync, Whitney Houston, Celine Dion). A crowning achievement during this period was to install, troubleshoot, deliver and support 50 Pro Tools workstations for the legendary Skywalker Sound during production of Star Wars Episode 1. He claims no responsibility for Jar Jar Binks.

In January 2000, he and Greg Gordon began working together exclusively at Pyramind where they began running the hybrid Production/ Training businesses successfully. Matt has served the company as Chief Engineer, Senior Producer/ Composer, Chief Technical Officer, Vice-President and now as Director of Education. He grew the Pyramind Training program from a single 24 hour class to athe highly-touted 920 hour 12-month Digital Sound Producer-Complete (DSP-C). He has trained hundreds of students and mixed/mastered another hundred or so records (including his own released in 2002) as well as publishing several magazine articles. Matt has also written two texts on Pro Tools (Pro Tools Overdrive V 6.9 and V7 for Thomson Press). He is currently working with various Pyramind Staff members and instructors to write nine books based on Pyramind's Core curriculum to be published by Alfred Publishing.

Matt currently lives in San Francisco with his wife Kimberly and his two children, Marcus and Madison. He has been training in Mixed Martial Arts and Bak Mei Kung Fu for 6 years and on good days, surfs the Pacific at Ocean Beach on his Al Merrick 6' 2" fish. The pacific usually wins. Occasionally, he even takes the dogs (Colonel and Chase) for a walk in Golden Gate Park.

Paul Lipson

Chief Operating Officer
Composer

Instrument: Guitar/Bass

For over seventeen years, Paul has refined his skills in management, strategy, music, and education. His career has taken him all over the world, and his passion for audio, technology, and the performing arts has helped him advocate for advancement in the interactive entertainment industry.

Paul is extremely passionate about music and interactive audio, and he currently serves as the President of the Game Audio Network Guild - the leading worldwide organization of game audio professionals. He has worked closely with the Officers of G.A.N.G. to originate the industry-first Program Partnership Initiative, and was the mastermind behind the Guild Scholarship Award for Game Audio. Paul was awarded the G.A.N.G. “Distinguished Service Award” at the 2006 Game Developer’s Conference for his work in education and advocacy for the interactive audio arts.

Before joining the team at Pyramind, he served as the co-founder and CEO of Hit Point Music (HPM) - a development company specializing in music for games and screen .  His team produced for an array of elite clients, including projects for America Online, Hasbro Interactive, Harmonix/Sonic Implants, Associated Production Music, Hyundai Automotive, Killer Tracks, The Environmental Protection Agency, Urbane-Dog Creative, and Legends-Tribal War, just to name a few.

Paul also served as the Chief Academic Officer at Expression College for Digital Arts, and worked as the Director of The Learning through Music and Technology Initiative at the LCG (Boston). He has also spent time as an instructor at Berklee College of Music, has conducted master classes at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and at the Conservatory of Pernambuco in Brazil, and was a founding teacher and Director of Technology at the Conservatory Lab Charter School (Boston).

Paul holds a Bachelors Degree and Masters Degree highest distinction from the world-renowned New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. He is a member of the International Game Developers Association, The Music Educators National Conference, BMI, and the Game Audio Network Guild.

David Earl

Composer
sflogicninja
Instructor

Instrument: Keyboards, Logic Studio

David Earl, AKA sflogicninja, is currently the second-highest-ranked YouTube guru for his intimate and concise training tips on Apple's Logic Studio.  There are over 10,000 people following him, and those numbers are growing everyday as he helps viewers get into the world of music composition and production.  Recently invited to present as sflogicninja during Remix Hotel at Winter Music Conference 2009 in Miami Beach, David wowed audiences with his skills.

With classical training in both Piano and Brass, David uses his deep knowledge of music combined with his intuitive grasp of technology and composition to help create the Pyramind Production Sound.  And he uses all of these skills daily at Pyramind, applying glitch and electronic textures and ambiences to create unique and intricate orchestral arrangements.

David's background pre-Pyramind includes twiddling knobs for Mickey Hart, co-producing the former Tower of Power singer Lenny Williams, producing and writing for the dynamic electronica duo "Marrow", and writing music for countless commercials under the supervision of Andy Newell at Ripesound.

And fortunately for students, the only thing David enjoys as much as writing and producing music is teaching.

Steve Heithecker

Art Director
Senior Instructor

Instrument: Piano & Keyboards

Steve is an accomplished composer, producer and keyboardist who has worked on more records than he can count and loves adding to that number. Steve has also written and produced music for live theater as well as film and video productions. Before moving his studio to Pyramind he was the co-founder of Digital Art & Music, a recording studio specializing in hip-hop/rap and alternative rock music. Steve is a Pro Tools and Reason expert and as a senior instructor at Pyramind constantly challenges his students to think and perform above and beyond the "bar."

As a writer, Steve co-authored the highly respected "Pro Tools 7 Session Secrets: Professional Recipes for High-Octane Results" for Wiley publishing, a book that brought numerous insider techniques to light for anyone using Pro Tools.

Steve is also an accomplished artist and graphic designer. He has designed dozens and dozens of albums and CD's over the years, and in his current position as Art Director for Pyramind, he is responsible for the look of Pyramind and Epiphyte Records, Pyramind's in-house record label.

Bryan Dale

Admissions Director
Senior Instructor

Instrument: Electric Guitar and Bass

Originally from Philadelphia, Bryan Dale has been playing guitar since the age of 13 and was teaching private lessons by the age of 17. While obtaining his bachelor's degree in Advertising & Public Relations at Pennsylvania State University, Bryan played in local bands, organized open mics, and continued his study of acoustic and electric guitar and electric bass. Bryan got his first professional studio experience working outside of Pittsburgh, PA in a local independent studio. Shortly thereafter, he sold his car to invest in his first home studio and subsequently recorded six solo records before enrolling in Pyramind's EMP program in 2005.

After graduating from Pyramind in October of the same year, Bryan worked briefly for Cutting Edge Audio Group in San Francisco before being hired by Pyramind as Admissions Liaison. Since then, Bryan has become Pyramind's Admissions Director and instructor for ProTools classes 101-210m. Additionally, Bryan continues to record local music, write and record solo material, and build upon the education he received at Pyramind. Most recently Bryan completed his Pro Tools Expert Certification in Music.

Will Spencer

Marketing & Events Director

Instrument: Technics 1200mkII

The last industry Will Spencer ever expected to find himself in was the music industry. But in 2000, his first experience with the underground rave scene changed that. All it took was one night listening to a DJ perform under the stars, and he knew he was one of those lucky few whose avocation had found him.

Since then, he has applied himself with characteristic focus and zeal towards the pursuit of his profession. His DJ career has taken him from warehouses in San Francisco to deserts outside LA, festivals in Miami, clubs in Phoenix, and bars in Belgium, playing alongside some of the industry's biggest stars, including Chris Fortier, Infected Mushroom, Paolo Mojo, Markus Schulz, Steve Porter, Jondi & Spesh, and more.

A Stanford University graduate, Will's family always encouraged him to pursue graduate school. But in 2006, he had a genuine moment of inspiration and realized that it may be possible go to school to study Pro Tools, instead. A brief online search led him to Digidesign's site, and to Pyramind, where in 2007 he enrolled in the DSP-Complete. In 2008 he graduated with distinction and earned the highly-competitive Summer internship at Sony PlayStation, where he worked on such critically-acclaimed titles as "inFAMOUS", "NBA Live 09", and "SOCOM: Confrontation."

In 2009, he joined Pyramind full-time as their new Marketing & Events Director, as position he earned in part as a result of his 2-year experience serving as the Marketing Director for Woosh! Inc., a technology startup he founded in 1999 with several Stanford colleagues. While at Woosh!, he was part of a team that raised over $20 million dollars from investors such as Hewlett-Packard. And as a member of the Woosh! Board of Directors, he helped grow the company from 5 students to over 50 full-time employees.

Currently tasked with overseeing Pyramind's burgeoning marketing department, expanding online presence, and ongoing community events, Will's experience as a Pyramind applicant, student, and graduate helps him build an outreach campaign geared to speak directly to the needs of outstanding potential students. And as a result of his years of experience in the San Francisco dance music community as a DJ, promoter, and now producer, his experience planning and promoting helps him construct events that inform, entertain, and engage the local music community.

Will continues to produce and perform in his spare time. From time to time, you can find him behind the decks at local venues such as Anu Bar, Supperclub, and Mezzanine, producing music that has been released on labels from New York to the UK, and also doing location and post-production sound for the occasional short film.

Michael Roache

Studio Manager
Engineer

Instrument: Guitar 

After graduating from Pyramind with the Digital Producer Certificate in 2007, Michael went from learning from the best in the biz to working with the best in the biz. Since then, his studio and live sound credits have included gigs with local acts like Marrow, The Blank Slates and Bhi Bhiman. You'll find Michael behind the scenes (and the wheel) of every event that Pyramind hosts. He is also an integral part of the Epiphyte Records staff and an honorary member of the Test Press Committee.

An East Coast native, Michael is at his best, and happiest, when he's in the studio hooking up microphones and running sessions. He knows his way around Pro Tools and a recording booth very well. However, being in the studio often takes a back seat to his managerial and organizational duties as Studio Manager. Luckily, he's really good at multitasking. Michael is also a guitarist and songwriter in his spare time.

Hideki Yamashita

IT Administrator
Assistant Technical Director

Instrument: Akai MPC-2000xl

Electronic music wiz/hip-hop producer for The Whereabouts and YBS, Deks came to Pyramind for the education and atmosphere, and to satisfy the curiosity he found in making music with computers. Fortunately, the melding of his passion for technology and music has brought him to an industry in which he thrives. 

An early Pyramind student, Hideki has since graduated to become Pyramind's IT  Administrator and Assistant Technical Director. Deks works hard to maintain the technical infrastructure at both the 880 and 832 Folsom St. facilities, and the rigorous scheduling and technical requirements of a multi-room studio and educational complex.